Marc Chagall

Sale: Klublokal Kunstkeller Bellevue, Zurich, December 18, 1956, lot 26
Acquired at the above sale

Turin, Museo Civico, L'opera di Marc Chagall, 1953, no. 274

Sylvie Forestier & Meret Meyer, Les Céramiques de Chagall, Paris, 1990, no. 154, illustrated p. 138

Executed on 6 ceramic tiles mounted on panel. Surface is slightly dirty, otherwise fine. Work is in very good condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Chagall's unique ceramics comprise an impressive and relatively unknown facet of the artist's expansive oeuvre. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Chagall experimented for the first time with the medium, working at potteries in Vence and Antibes and later taking lessons alongside Léger and Picasso at the Madoura workshop in Vallauris (see fig. 1). He soon fell in love with the art form, and over the next decade produced a remarkable body of painted and glazed ceramic objects.

Chagall was initially drawn to the ceramic mural as a more architecturally integrated means of decorating a space than hanging a canvas, but soon became fascinated by the unique properties of the medium which allowed him to carry out his pictorial ambitions beyond the limitations of painting. Franz Meyer writes, "In the pictures painted [during the late 1940s] he had given the colors a greater material depth and a more objective, independent validity. Both qualities found a new 'physical' basis in his ceramic works, for it is only baking in the furnace that gives the modeled mass its consistency and the applied glaze its color. The fire makes them one and they are united by a far closer bond than paint and canvas...There is a living union, a merger of pictorial and material. The image enlivens the substance and vice versa. That is why all these works possess a peculiar radiance stimulated by a bath in the elemental" (Franz Meyer, Marc Chagall, Life and Work, New York, 1963, p. 519-20).

This achievement is on full view in L'Automne, which boasts a palette of typical vibrancy, yet with hues not seen in Chagall's oils. The dialogue between pigment and support is tumultuous yet more cohesive than any painting, and the surface, presumed smooth and tile-like, is in fact a warren of incisions and impasto. "[Chagall's] very finest tiles and plates were full of "sculptural" form: scratched lines either not colored at all or colored subsequently; thickly applied color which contributes to the relief effect by the consistency of the solidified enamels" (Meyer, ibid., p. 522). Despite their success, tiled murals such as the present work are extremely rare, and L'Automne may well be the last Chagall ever created. Feeling constrained by the "inorganic" grid of tiles, Chagall eventually became more interested in modeling the clay himself, and Meyer states that he abandoned the format after 1952, though the present work (not recorded by Meyer) dates from the following year.

Fig. 1: Chagall in his Madoura studio circa 1953